Lockleaze: The Future, Self-finish & SNUG homes.

Thanks to United Communities for their invitation for us to be present at the “Lockleaze: The Future” community event held at The Hub last Saturday. (4th February 2017). Included in the awareness raising of various developments was the Sheldon Road project which will be the second Bristol CLT (Community Land Trust) site.

Ecomotive’s Jackson Moulding provided the self-finish support for the members moving into their homes at 325 Fishponds Road in 2016, as part of the Bristol CLT’s sweat equity model. The sweat equity model provides opportunities for homeowners to increase their equity share based on an exchange of labour, with a similar formula applied for tenants that can help reduce their annual rental costs.

“Self-finish” is a relatively new term and is certainly not (yet) mainstream so the event provided an ideal opportunity to discuss what “self-finish” can include.

At the Hub we also had lots of interest in our SNUG eco-home concept and took the opportunity to ask for feedback on the design, the intended features and importantly, could people imagine themselves living in a SNUG community if a project was to take hold in the community.

We had fantastic feedback throughout the day where the opportunity to be involved in internal finishings design and build (with a sliding scale of involvement) appealed to all regardless of previous build / DIY experience.

A common theme for families and individuals was the need for a stepping stone between renting and homeownership, and desire to live in homes that can reduce energy bills. Both of these needs making the Sheldon Road project and SNUG concept very relevant to current aspirations within Lockleaze. We also attracted commercial interest for the SNUG to be used for different purposes other than housing, anything from purpose-built offices to shower blocks.

As a pre-fab design, The SNUG design provides a modular shell that can allow the end-user to customise the internals and externals. We are currently looking for early pioneers who would like to customer-finance one of our prototype builds. If this might be you.. read more here.